On October 17th, we had a New Mexico and Arizona style fiesta inspired by Phoenix (where I grew up) and some New Mexico green chiles we found at Berkeley Bowl. Luckily we bought them early in the week, because they disappeared when we went back for more later on.
We made some fresh salsa with tomatoes from our first Terra Firma Farms CSA box. We have been talking about re-joining a CSA for more than a year and finally did it. We used to get Full Belly and were happy with them, too.
We also made some delicious beans: Pintos and Calypsos from Seed Savers Exchange. You probably know by now that I have a dry bean obsession. You can find excellent dry beans outside at Monterey Market (near the squashes), from Rancho Gordo, or from SSE. The different varieties have much better flavor than the plain black, white, pinto and kidney beans in cans.
Rachel asked me what the "secret" to my beans is. I always try to soak them overnight or for as long as possible. I cook the beans on the lowest heat that still lets them barely simmer, which will take 2-4 hours. To cheat, use the pressure cooker which is ~1 hour but the beans get softer. When they are mostly done, I add a bouquet of herbs onion, usually some kind of sweet pepper, and spices. For the mexican beans I added oil, onion, chili powder, cumin, mexican seasoning (Adobo), veggie broth, salt, cilantro, oregano, epazote, sweet pepper and a tomato.
Rachel asked me what the "secret" to my beans is. I always try to soak them overnight or for as long as possible. I cook the beans on the lowest heat that still lets them barely simmer, which will take 2-4 hours. To cheat, use the pressure cooker which is ~1 hour but the beans get softer. When they are mostly done, I add a bouquet of herbs onion, usually some kind of sweet pepper, and spices. For the mexican beans I added oil, onion, chili powder, cumin, mexican seasoning (Adobo), veggie broth, salt, cilantro, oregano, epazote, sweet pepper and a tomato.
We made Chile Rellenos in Red Chile sauce from this recipe. I loved the red sauce and liked the filling, but would go with a different overall recipe next time.
John chars the chiles to skin them.
beginning of the chile sauce: four kinds of dried chiles cooking up
We also made fish tacos. We finally made it to Tokyo Fish Market and grilled some Rock Cod and Halibut for the tacos. The fish from there was excellent and they have lots of other Japanese goodies.
We used this recipe for the fish marinade:
And served the fish on corn tortillas with shredded cabbage, salsa, avocado, cotija cheese and creamy San Diego-style sauce. I would (and we did) eat this sauce on everything!
This was the base recipe:
I used less (about 1/4c) mayo, ½ c each yogurt and mexican crema casera, and about 2x the spices. I used fresh oregano and minced a roasted NM green chile instead of a jalapeno, canned chiles would work also.
Last, I made some dragon fruit granita/sorbet which looked lovely but didn't taste like much:
We had such a beautiful spread of other dishes from guests. Ben brought amazing little seared tuna & mango salsa appetizers:
Erin & Jeff brought spaghetti squash dish, Tanya & Kevin brought guacamole AND tomatillo enchiladas, Kent brought margaritas and Haley & Benson brought two kinds of yummy sangria. The Spencer-Reed family came with Terra Firma strawberries and watermelon and made Agua Fresca.
Phew! Almost done... I made a Tres Leches Cake from the Tartine Bakery cookbook with a blood orange/citrus compote from here.
And a Pumpkin Flan with the last of my frozen pumpkin from last year
(just in time to make another batch!)
The recipe was from here:
I used 1 ½ Tb orange juice concentrate instead of juice. And used 4 eggs plus two egg yolks. I went easier on the spices (about ½ of recipe amounts) to let the pumpkin shine through.
Last but not least, some guests got a taste of Dulce de Leche that I used between the cake layers. It's quite easy to make from sweetened condensed milk and SO tasty. I used the method here:
Phew! That was a long post, Mexican food has so many details. It was a delicious dinner and we were too busy eating our way through the spread to take many pictures, but here is one of me sneaking away to read a bedtime story to the kiddos before they went home:
Two weeks to go!
No comments:
Post a Comment